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Mulika Mwizi!

I am writing this to shed light on a disturbing trend I have noticed. Some time ago, there was the Letter To My Thirteen Year OldSelf series of blog posts. I call it series for luck of a better word. One thing I admired with the bloggers blogging about this subject is that they recognized that it was not their original idea. Most had been nudged by fellow bloggers to do a similar post. Soon, it became like a trend in the blog world and most blogs had a ‘Letter to My Thirteen Year Old Self’ post , whether the authors had been tagged or not. I was shocked during the same time, to see a similar article in the News paper. Obviously, it was not the journalist’s original idea and because we ALL know where he had gotten the idea, I expected him to say that he had stumbled on something on the internet that prompted him to write an article under that title….or something like that.

But no! He didn’t. My cousin back at the village who doesn’t know what a blog is, must have marveled at the creativity and originality of this particular writer that day!

As I write this , I risk being accused of crying louder than the bereaved. No one died, really, but I am rattled! How can a whole journalist who is PAID to write stuff for a newspaper , copy a blogger’s thoughts ….and not have the decency to give credit . Look at this and tell me : This blog post was posted by one @ItsnowRC . How come days later we have this story carried by Nation. Same script, different cast! What are these journalists showing us?

Secondly, I have sometimes seen some tweetters copying and pasting other people’s tweets and not bothering to give credit. Probably that is something I should add to this post : ‘Why I Unfollowed You‘. I know, I have unfollowed someone, who by the way, is a journalist, simply because I could not stand their plagiarizing habits!

I think it is inappropriate, shameless, even rude, for a journalist to copy-paste stuff…. and not give credit. And why copy anyway? Writing is your job! Surely you can do better than that. That’s why they hired you.

I think we should have someone specializing in copyrights and Intellectual property and we make a suit. Or if it was possible bloggers would have a Mwalimu Mati to champion for those rights and we camp outside Nation Building… If only…

He he, my only surprise is that you are shocked by this! I have seen this happen over and over again over years, (even seen ideas that friends have shared with TV producers only to be dismissed as unworkable later surface as TV program), not to mention proposal sent to donors rejected then to see the same ideas being funded by the same donors being implemented by their friends! So sad but not shocking to me.

I cosign on this. Kenyan print journalism seems to have gone to the dogs. Most of the articles in daily newspapers are not well thought out, or well researched. Some even contain inaccuracies or half truths that can be corrected by spending some time on Google. Like you I have wondered whether the writers simply do not care or maybe they think we do not notice.

@Mrs Mwiti,
thank you for taking the proverbial bull by the horns with both bare knuckle hands;
if the voiceless bereaved chicken out of raising the brouhaha will the copy(&paste) cats ever be forced to mend their bootlegging tendencies? name and shame these plagiarists, the court of public opinion may be more lenient than standing before a judge in a real court of law